1 Transhumanism and Catholicism: Agreements and Disagreements By Brian Patrick Green, Ph.D.,
[email protected] Markkula Center for Applied Ethics and School of Engineering, Santa Clara University To the Christian French Entrepreneurs & Leaders (YEDC) Learning Expedition Monday, 9 January 2017 These are rough notes, please do not take them as perfected. I. Introduction First, let me introduce myself: my name is Brian Patrick Green, I am the Assistant Director of Campus Ethics programs at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University and a lecturer in their School of Engineering, where I teach ethics to graduate engineering students, particularly software engineers, but also bioengineers, mechanical, electrical, environmental, etc. My doctoral degree is in ethics from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, and I wrote my dissertation on the relationship of Catholic natural law and natural science. My undergraduate degree is in genetics from the University of California, Davis. I also spent two years as a Jesuit Volunteer teaching high school in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific. But I am not a Jesuit; I am married with three children. I’ve been studying transhumanism for about ten years now and I have published several papers and chapters on the subjects and I am working on an edited volume with my colleagues Ted Peters (professor at GTU, Berkeley) and Arvin Gouw (cancer researcher at UC Berkeley and Stanford). We have a local meetup group called Theologians Testing Transhumanism (TTT), and we are connected to most of the scholars studying the intersection of religion and transhumanism in the USA. Second, thank you for inviting me to speak to you. I consider it a great honor to be here, and I hope that this will be a fruitful introduction. Please know that I am very interested in learning more about you as well – I hope that perhaps some ongoing relationships might be formed from this meeting. Please feel free to email me at:
[email protected] I am excited to meet all of you because there are some very active movements developing right now at the intersection of Catholicism, and religion more broadly, and technology. I am
2 connected with French Dominican Fr. Eric Salobir and his OPTIC network, and other groups, including several with entrepreneurs from America and Italy. II. Overview What I am going to discuss today is a quick overview of the relationships of Catholic Church and Technology, and the Catholic Church and Transhumanism, as I understand them. II.A. Defining Transhumanism To begin, we should define transhumanism. As I understand the term, which I think should be a widely acceptable definition, transhumanism is the quest for the radical technological enhancement of human abilities, primarily including length of life, health, and intelligence. Ultimately, the goal of some transhumanists is to become god-like in power: immortal, omnipotent, omniscient, creators of new worlds, and so on. II.B. Origins of the Concept of Transhumanization and Its Secularization The word for transhumanism, interestingly, comes from the Italian poet Dante, in his Paradiso, Canto 1, where it is used as “trasumanar” “to transhumanize” with reference to Glaucus, a human who was accepted to join the gods of the sea. This transhumanizing idea is not foreign to Christianity. The phrase “God became man that man might become God” is a rough summary of the concept of divinization, or deification, which was held by many early Church Fathers including St. Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, St. Justin Martyr, St. Athanasius of Alexandria, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, St. Basil of Caesarea, and St. Augustine of Hippo, and is still considered to be theologically orthodox, though not often spoken of among Catholics. Through holiness and God’s grace we become like God. The difference with contemporary transhumanism is the means of deification: theological/moral vs. human/technological. Obviously, these are significant differences. Contemporary technological transhumanism is very different from traditional Christian ideas of transcending humanity through holiness. However, the lines between technology and holiness are becoming blurred and confused, which is leading to some of our current ideological environment. To many today technology is more real than God, yet the old ideals of a heavenly utopia, or Kingdom of God, die hard, and so technology must replace God to fulfill these age-old cultural and psychological desires.
3 This is clearly visible today in much of the talk around Artificial Intelligence – a human quest to build a god.
II.C. The Catholic Church and Technology Moving away from some of the words and concepts surrounding transhumanism, we might ask what the history is of the relationship of the Catholic Church and technology more broadly construed. II.C.1. Promotion Surprisingly to some, but not to others, the Catholic Church was one of the driving forces for technological development in the history of Europe. There are four major ways in which the Church acted to drive technological development in Europe: 1) Collection & Preservation, 2) Promotion, 3) Production, and 4) Consumption. 1) Collection and preservation of scientific and technological knowledge. Catholic monks, clergy, and others carefully preserved significant portions of the knowledge of the ancient world, and what they could not save in Europe they later worked to collect from foreign lands in the Middle Ages. As an example, St. Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies, while not particularly accurate as etymologies, were very significant as records of ancient knowledge in multiple fields, including mathematics, medicine, agriculture, minerology, metallurgy, weapons, ships, architecture, clothing, household items, etc. Monasteries also preserved enormous amounts of knowledge through the copying of books, including, for example, a manuscript where Archimedes pioneered Riemann sums and other areas of math presaging calculus. Monks even invented ducted central heating in the 9th century in order to keep their libraries and scriptoria warm and dry in the damp winter. 2) Promotion of scientific and technological progress. In addition to ducted central heating, monks developed a system of schools, invented the tidal powered waterwheel (in the 500s), invented musical notation, invented impact drilling for artesian wells, were crucial for the development of quality control for various types of alcohol (crucial for the development of chemistry later on), etc. Medieval universities also provided places for the beginnings of the scientific revolution, with such figures as Albert the Great, Roger Bacon, the Oxford Calculators, Bishops Robert Grosseteste and Nicole Oresme, and so on.
4 These “natural philosophers” began to codify the scientific method via observation and experimentation – their greatest contribution – and also made major advances in chemistry, mechanics, optics, zoology, and other fields. Independent Christians also made significant theoretical and technological advances, including such figures as Bl. Ramon Llull, who pioneered computational theory and combinatorial logic for the sake of trying to evangelize Muslims in North Africa. The list of significant Christian scientific figures goes on and on through history, even to now, including such names as Copernicus, Agricola, Galileo, Torricelli, Pascal, Steno, Ampere, Pasteur, Mendel, and Lemaitre. 3) Production of specific technological products. Monasteries, again, were veritable factories for technological products ranging from small tools to serious civil engineering feats such as building reservoirs and mills, constructing dikes and flood control, and draining swamps. The Cistercians were particularly renowned as engineers and metallurgists. Cistercians in England may have even approached the development of a blast furnace 200 years before the industrial revolution, but their experiments were destroyed by King Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries. Non-monastic religious orders also existed and performed engineering, such as the Freres Pontifes, who built the Pont D’Avignon and other bridges in the 12th century. Religious orders were perfect institutions for large-scale engineering feats before governments and now corporations had become strong enough to take over such tasks. These religious origins should help us see the religious spirit which still pervades government and business – for better or for worse – when tightly focused on a higher – or lower – purpose. 4) Consumption of technological products. For over 1000 years the Catholic Church acted as the primary promoter for the creation of a broadly technological economy in Europe. Churches and cathedrals are prime examples of institutions demanding and sustaining technological advance. For example: stone construction and carving, cement and metal, metallurgy to produce tools, lumbering and wood carving, ceramics, quarrying and mining of minerals and precious stones, glass chemistry and technology, trade and transportation technology, and so on As just one example, pipe organs were known in the ancient world, yet only in the early middle ages in the West were they deemed not profane, but capable of enhancing the sacred. The amount of technology needed for a pipe organ is staggering: by 950 AD Winchester Cathedral had an organ with 400 pipes the operation of which required 70 men to continuously pump 26 bellows (White, 1978, 65, 186-7).
5 As another example, all-mechanical clocks were invented in the late 1200s and quickly spread due to demand from monasteries and churches scheduling prayers. Similar clocks existed elsewhere in the world, but only as rarities and as such were repeatedly lost to history – no progressive technological advance or economic development came from them. With these examples, I hope I have shown that the Catholic Church has been a major force for technological progress over the last 2000 years. You are living and extending that tradition today, and for that I am thankful. II.C.2. Limitations With this promotion of progress we must also examine types of technology that the Church has opposed over time. A prime example of this is weapons technology, many types of which the Church has consistently rejected and sought to limit, even from the year 1139 when the Second Lateran Council banned the use of the crossbow on fellow Christians. This particular restriction failed – HOWEVER – the idea was passed down into international law, which still preserves the idea of weapons which are malum in se – intrinsically evil (a Catholic term) and therefore worthy of restrictions within the laws of war. Currently such restricted weapons include poisoned bullets, blinding lasers, and certain chemical and all biological weapons. In the future further weapons may be banned such as lethal autonomous weapons systems or “killer robots” and nuclear weapons – which the Church has publicly and strenuously opposed since the day after Hiroshima. In Laudato Si the Pope continues in this tradition, seeking to limit or ban destructive weapons technologies as well as fossil fuel technologies, while asking for the progression of renewable energy technologies and technologies which benefit the poor. In fact, Pope Francis quotes Pope Benedict in saying that “The work of the Church seeks not only to remind everyone of the duty to care for nature, but at the same time ‘she must above all protect mankind from self-destruction,’” (LS 79, citing CV 51). That is an extremely significant quote. The popes have clearly stated that the purpose of the Church is to preserve not only nature but also humankind. The Church’s work is not only spiritual but also corporeal.
6 Additionally, many people are well aware of the Church’s opposition to many technologies of reproductive control including artificial contraceptives, abortion, sterilization, in vitro fertilization, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, surrogacy, donor gametes, and so on. The Church disagrees with these technologies on the same fundamental principles as it opposes weapons technologies – these are technologies which do not promote a culture of life, but rather one of death – a “throwaway culture” as Pope Francis calls it, where human life is seen as a cost and not a benefit, or as having a calculable value and not an incalculable dignity. II.D. Summary of the Catholic Tradition In the midst of this historical tradition we might ask what the big-picture is for the Catholic relationship to technology, and how that might relate to transhumanism. The answer is simple. If a technology promotes human well-being and moral good, then that technology ought to be developed and progress. If a technology puts at risk human well-being and/or promotes or facilitates moral evil, that technology ought to be limited or banned. If a technology is dual-use and can be used for both good and evil, then that technology ought to be very carefully evaluated and controlled for the sake of protecting the common good. In relation to transhumanism then, from the Catholic tradition we can say this. Extending life and health are good. In fact, Jesus commands his disciples to go forth and heal the sick, and even raise the dead, in his name. Likewise, education, knowledge, and wisdom are good, and insofar as transhumanism can promote them then we can make common cause. But where transhumanism seeks to disrupt human nature or damage or kill, for example through frivolous mutilations of the body or destruction of human embryos, these actions should be opposed. Technologies which may facilitate moral evil should be controlled and restricted. And these technologies are, some of them, necessary for transhumanism. This knowledge should make us very skeptical of some transhumanist goals and the means to those goals. Perhaps the greatest gift of the Catholic tradition with respect to technology is the idea that we can choose what technologies to advance and which to limit.
7 The entire tradition of the Church bears witness to this fact, but Catholic Social Teaching of the last 120 years is particularly clear on this, for example in Paul VI’s Populorum Progressio and Francis’s Laudato Si. Secular philosophers have only recent begun to realize that such an idea of differential technological progress could be taken seriously, or even attempted, but the Catholic Church has always understood this and attempted it, though with varying degrees of success. III. Now Some Specific Points on the Current State of Religion and Transhumanism There are points of concordance between Christianity and transhumanism which allow for the making of common cause on some issues, most clearly of which are ones which promote human life and health in ways that respect human nature. There are also serious differences – both practical and theoretical – which result in Christianity and transhumanism having limited compatibility. I hope that these will become clear by the end of the talk. Here I want to explore some particular issues in religion and transhumanism to gain a few insights both broad and narrow. III.A. First is the concept of “religious transhumanism.” What is "religious transhumanism"? The phrase can have two meanings because there are two kinds of religious transhumanist: 1) Religious people seeking to incorporate transhumanism into their own faith traditions; Mormon transhumanism being archetypal. Mormon transhumanists believe that transhumanism will fulfill all the promises of Mormon scriptures, turning humans into immortal gods who create new worlds, resurrect the dead, and build heaven on Earth. I know the leader of the Mormon transhumanists and he sincerely believes that we are all living in a computer simulation set up by a god who was once as we are now – a simple mortal who transhumanized into a god via technology. The point of the simulation is to create further gods who will do the same, ad infinitum. More traditional religions can have unexpected affinities with transhumanism too. For example, in Hinduism we find two stories with resonance with current technology. In the Mahabharata, Queen Gandhari creates 100 artificial uteri to gestate 100 sons outside of her body. This clearly resonates with contemporary effort to produce an artificial uterus for the purposes of ectogenesis.
8 Similarly, the story of the origin of Lord Ganesha – who has the body of a human and the head of an elephant – resonates with current buzz around the idea of a human head transplant. I should add, mythological similarities with contemporary technological inventions should never be seen as confirmation for the truth of ancient myths, though for those who already believe something to be true, the similarities are extremely cognitively attractive. 2) The second meaning is the religiosity of secular transhumanists. Secular transhumanists, while often being atheist and in many cases anti-religious, themselves exhibit some extremely religious beliefs and behaviors, most noticeably faith in technological progress and salvation via technology, the creation of god-like entities (human or machine) via technology, the creation of heaven on Earth, etc. In fact, transhumanism could probably be understood as a Christian heresy in many ways. There are also clear analogies to past ideological systems such as Marxist Communism, where the “New Man” would build a utopia. Some transhumanists are extremely zealous and find their entire life meaning in the endeavor, even proposing ideas such as banning anti-transhumanist speech or using ends-justify-the-means morality where all evils are justified in order to obtain transhumanist paradise. These individuals do exist and they are dangerous. III.B. What is the current state-of-the-art of transhumanism? Transhumanist goals are advancing in a limited fashion. There are many tech billionaires (including Peter Thiel, a protégé of Rene Girard) who have put their money into transhumanist goals, especially life extension, even starting entire businesses to pursue these goals, such as Calico (by Google) and Human Life Incorporated (Craig Venter and Bryan Johnson). Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook recently pledged money to “cure all diseases.” These should neither be automatically accepted or dismissed. Medical advance is good. But if the goal is immortality without God, then there are serious underlying ideological problems. One area of fascinating advance is in neural prosthetics: brain-computer interfaces. Some transhumanists hope to replace the entire function of the human brain with electronic substrate, and the initial proof of concept test are promising, with neural chips and BCIs working as expected. How far this can go will be determined in the next decades. One moral risk in transhumanism is overselling the possibilities of it –lying. Material immortality is nowhere near possible. I once gave a talk to some local transhumanists where I described the current technological situation and they were much humbled afterwards (though their spirits seem to have recovered).
9 The likelihood of curing every cause of death is extremely remote. It requires near-infinite power and control and morality. God-like attributes not just in power but Goodness and truth and beauty. III.C. Given these challenges, why am I interested in transhumanism? This is an opportunity for thought experiments to test our philosophical and theological beliefs. When I completed my MA thesis on the Catholic perspective on genetic therapy and enhancement the fundamental criterion for the acceptance of new manipulations was whether it contributed to the “natural development of the human being.” This term is clear and also very unclear, because there is debate over the meaning of nearly all the words in the phrase. Also, I’m surrounded by it, so I don’t have a choice. I live in a transhuman-wannabe milieu; I understand the appeal, and the horror. Transhumanism has a disturbingly effective and uncritically accepted appeal to the young. I once guest lectured in a course trying to highlight the absurdity of several transhumanist beliefs, only to have a quarter of the students tell me afterwards that it seemed completely sensible to them. Transhuman ideology is not going to go away. It is too appealing. It will become the Communism of the 21st century, I think. III.D. What Are Some Acceptable Limits for Transhumanism? Transhumanism is actually a very life-affirming and pro-life movement in many ways. Just as Communism pointed our sincere limitations in the new industrial economy of Europe, transhumanism points to sincere limitations in the human relationship to technology – namely – that we are not using it to truly help humanity as much as it could. The Church is the original pro-life and pro-life-extension institution. The Church invented modern healthcare, it invented modern education – these are divine commands for us. But where goals become separated from their origins they may go astray, and that is what transhumanism is doing. The goal must not be life at all cost, but holiness. Healthcare and education can assist holiness, but they can also impede it. Without knowing that boundary – or even that such a boundary exists – we cannot expect transhumanism to work out for the common good. III.E. Humanism vs. Transhumanism Christianity has always been a “transhuman” religion in many ways, while also being deeply humanistic. God is above us yet God becomes one of us, blessing us in our limitations. III.F. What Kind of Future?
10 I expect that in the future, if we do not first destroy ourselves, we will live longer and healthier lives. By the end of this century, we will perhaps routinely live to near 100. But we will still die. As a last ditch attempt, some people will freeze their bodies in cryogenic nitrogen as an expensive form of burial, and they will never be “resuscitated” as the cryonicists claim. The healthcare interventions needed for transhumanism will be expensive. The vulnerable and poor will not be able to access them in the ways that the rich will. And by extending the lives of the rich, and not the lives of the poor, we can expect inequality to increase in society. There is a core moral problem here of confusing the monetary value of a human life with the moral dignity of a human life. Human lives do have associated monetary values, but we are never ONLY our monetary value. We have infinite value as beings loved by God for our own sakes. Of the transhumanists I know, only a few have any significant care for the poor at all. And from these individuals I consistently hear the lament – why don’t other transhumanists care about the poor and vulnerable? The libertarian and secular ethos does not promote it. With transhumanism, the future for the poor is not good. IV. A Long Conclusion There are two Biblical stories which I think are worth examining before I end. The first begins in Genesis 1 and ends in Revelation 21 (the Apocalypse of John). In Genesis 1 the sea represents primal chaos, and God divides it away from the land so that the world can be made. In Revelation 21, “the sea is no more.” Chaos is eliminated from reality and all is ordered. There is no more chance, no more decay, no more thieves, or predation, or tears, or rust, or moths to eat one’s clothes. The Bible begins in an idyllic Garden and ends in a flying cubic city, the New Jerusalem. This in itself is a rather fascinating fact, but more than that, technology can be construed as humankind’s quest to remove chaos from nature, to slowly roll back chance and eventually put everything under orderly control, in imitation of God’s own actions. Flood control is a clear example of this. Guarding against asteroids and other catastrophic risks is another. Less and less is a matter of chance, and more and more a matter of choice. Is this imitation of God’s actions his intention for us? The second story is that of the Garden of Eden.
11 God forbids humankind from eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, on penalty of death. Yet the Snake counsels otherwise – we will not die, no, we will become like gods. And humankind did eat, recognized good and evil, and were duly expelled from Eden. God clothes them with animal skins before their expulsion, the first explicit mentioned technology in the Bible. Technology is a gift given by God to humanity to maintain us in the absence of God’s direct care. (Though we can surmise that technology pre-existed the Fall, as “tilling” the garden seems to entail tools.) Both God and Snake told the truth, in their own ways, though the Snake also clearly lied. Today humans know much of Good and Evil, too much, and we do surely die. The Snake, on the other hand, lied about death – we do die, though immortality awaits in the next life – and yet… we do seem more like God now, in our Knowledge of Good and Evil, and also in our power to enact good and wreak evil. And being like God is, as we know, good. The question is in what sense are we trying to be like God? In Power or in Goodness? Here is the distinction: the Snake promised us to be gods without God, separated individualistic atomistic gods trying to exist on our own, apart from the source of existence itself. This is, from both theological and philosophical perspectives, clearly absurd and impossible. It is seeking to be powerful like God without the goodness that is God. This can only lead to destruction. In terms of Rene Girard, it is entering into a mimetic rivalry with God, rather than a cooperation with God. In contrast, the promise of the imitation of Christ and divinization is one of becoming god with God, in unity, not separation. We return to our source, to Being Itself, where we can survive death – and even in life, through Eucharistic communion, become what we eat. We seek holiness first, and then power will come from that – power for goodness only and not evil. Might does not make right. Right makes might. The Genesis narratives and many other Biblical narratives are too complex to have one simple meaning, they have many correct meanings, I believe, as well as many incorrect meanings. Sorting them out is too difficult and so I do not claim to do so here. What I will claim is that transhumanism is a deeply religious movement, stemming from the Christian worldview, yet turning away from it in many significant ways, not the least of which is its pursuit of salvation without God. Transhumanism is built on a loss of perspective – it mistakes a gift from God for God itself
12 Technology is a gift from God to humankind, for the sake of doing good, not evil. In learning good AND evil we err; evil is knowledge we should not know. Technology is like a bandage on the lethal wound of original sin. If we think the bandage will cure us we are wrong; it is only a temporary stop-gap measure until we can receive proper medical aid – or in reality, proper spiritual aid. Insofar as transhumanists seek to extend healthy human life and otherwise enhance our human capacities in ways that allow us to make a better world in which we can more fully pursue unity truth, beauty, the common good, and union with God, then we can approve of their works and join with them. Insofar as transhumanists seek to enhance their capacities in morally ambiguous or clearly evil ways, developing powers with destructive potential, designing apocalyptic weapons, seeking to squash legitimate human freedom, obscure the truth, and so on, Christians must not approve, and in fact should steadfastly oppose them. Embedded in this conundrum is, of course, the question of knowing what Good and Evil are in a pluralistic world where secularism has diverged in very significant ways from traditional Christian perspectives on many issues. It seems that the Knowledge of Good and Evil that we gained from the Tree was not so clear or beneficial after all. The Bible gives no explanation why the fruit was forbidden. Perhaps even now we are living in the explanation of why God did not want us to take this path. Surely, as we grow in power we grow in danger to ourselves. Whereas in the past we were involuntarily constrained by our weakness, now we must learn to be voluntarily constrained by our good judgment, our ethics. If history is our guide, this fact should not give us confidence. If we choose ethics before power, perhaps we might still live. But if we choose power before ethics we will die. The question for us is, given that we are here now, what shall we do? And for that I have two quotes: “The only thing we can do for the future is to do the right thing, now.” – Wendell Berry And what might that right thing be? “We need to create a world in which it is easier for people to be good.” – Peter Maurin of the Catholic Worker movement Our task is, in consonance with Pope Francis’s guidance in Laudato Si, not primarily a technological one, but primarily a moral one. If we get the moral part right, the God’s
13 technological gifts to us will align as well. If we get the technology right, but not the morality, then we will all surely die. Thank you.
